Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to series transistor devices arranged in serial and, more particularly, to designs for such devices that may be used in memory arrays.
Description of the Related Art
Hot carrier injection is a phenomenon in semiconductor devices where a charge carrier (e.g., an electron or a hole) overcomes a potential barrier and, potentially, changes the behavior of a semiconductor device (such as, e.g., a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) device). This phenomenon provides one mechanism for the design of an electrically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM), where the behavior of the device is stable over time but can be changed by the application of hot carrier injection.
However, existing designs for CMOS EEPROM devices suffer from inefficiencies in the application of hot hole injection. In particular, the use of silicon dioxide as a gate dielectric in CMOS devices results in a high energy barrier for the injection of hot holes (e.g., about 5 eV), such that the possible designs for CMOS EEPROM designs are limited.